Motivational Factors and Profitability of Food Restaurant Businesses Owned by Females in Tanzania

As urban population increases in Tanzania due to the current policy of industrialization, food processing activities have grown to be importance to meet new consumer demands. Tanzanian females have a long established role in this subsector, but their potential for advancement in sales and profitability is impeded by many factors. By recognizing the importance of females in the food industry and the challenges they have, this study has focused on assessment of the influence of motivational factors on the profitability of food restaurant businesses managed and owned by females, taking into account achievement, reward and social recognition as the motives behind starting food businesses. The study was conducted in Morogoro, Dodoma and Singida municipalities. The study used exploratory design to conduct a survey of motivator’s factors to the study area. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to show the relationships between motivation latent variables (Achievement, reward and Society) and their relative indicators.  This was used to determine whether the hypothesized motivational conceptual structure provided a good fit to the data by assessing the items internal consistence and their reliability, profitability was found to be affected by reward (β = 0.31, p = 0.000) and society (β = 0.22, p = 0.000). Therefore, these two motivational factors (reward and society) were found to have a positive and significantly relationship with profitability levels of food restaurants in the study area. It is recommended that, training has to be done to female operating food restaurant businesses in order for them to recognize their inner motivation before starting the businesses. This is important because, it was found that, most of the business started without owner’s motivation are not successful and ended up with poor performance.